The Red Notebook Part 6

'Franois, did you by any chance notice anyone asking for me this morning?'

'Nope, no one.'

William closed his eyes.

'William!' Sebastien Gardhier called down from the first-floor mezzanine. 'So, did you see her?'

'Yes, she's doing well, she's conscious, the doctor's happy, and should be out in four days.'

'Marvellous. Send her our love, won't you?' he said.

William crossed the workshop and swooped on Jeanne, who was burnis.h.i.+ng some gilding with an agate stone.

'Jeanne,' he said with something approaching solemnity. 'Did someone ask to see me this morning?'

'No,' replied Jeanne. 'Why are you looking at me like that? You're being peculiar. Anyway, how's Laure?'

'She's fine, everything's fine. Everything's great. Amandine,' he mumbled, 'where's Amandine?'

'She popped out to buy something. She shouldn't be long.'

He had been pacing around the courtyard on the pretext of needing some fresh air for a good ten minutes when he glimpsed his colleague across the cobbles.

'Amandine!' he shouted, darting towards her.

Amandine froze.

'My G.o.d, no,' she said, holding her fist to her mouth as if to hold back the words. 'Please don't tell me Laure's ...' she whispered.

'No, no! Laure's fine, she's conscious, she'll be out soon.'

'What's the matter with you!' cried Amandine. 'You scared the living daylights out of me. I thought she was dead.'

'Sorry,' stammered William. 'I didn't mean to scare you.'

'I'm still shaking,' she went on, looking down at her hands while William went on apologising profusely. 'Oh, a guy came to give you back her keys,' she added crossly, delving into her jacket pocket.

'So?' said Baulieu, walking in without knocking. 'How are we feeling this morning?'

'Better,' replied Laure.

'Good,' said Baulieu.

He sat down beside her and took her blood pressure, pressing the little b.u.t.ton on the machine with a steady hand.

'Have you solved the riddle of the mystery man?' he asked without taking his eyes off the screen.

'We think he must be a neighbour,' said Laure.

Baulieu nodded.

'120/50 ... No dizziness? Nausea? Headaches?'

'A little bit, last night.'

'That's normal. Good, I think we'll soon have you gilding again,' he said with a smile.

'Yes, everything will be just the same as before,' murmured Laure, 'except I'll never get my bag back.'

'You can always buy another one ...'

'No, the things inside it were irreplaceable. You can't replace a piece of your life. I realise that must sound over the top, but it feels that way to me.'

Baulieu smiled in acceptance.

'I believe you,' he said, placing his hand on Laure's. 'You're my last patient. Your waking up is a good note to end my career on.'

'Thank you, Professor,' whispered Laure after a pause.

'No,' said the doctor softly, turning his head towards the window, 'I'm the one who should be thanking you. Do great things, Laure, be happy, or at least do your best to be. Life is fragile; you've found that out for yourself.'

He stood up and smiled at her.

'Just one thing,' he added, rolling up the cuff of his blood-pressure monitor. 'Miserable old cynic that I am, I don't really buy the idea of a neighbour coming in to feed a stranger's cat.'

He winked and left without another word.

Laurent sat at the desk by the entrance checking stock on the computer while, perched on the tall ladder, Maryse tidied up the history shelves. Damien was deep in conversation with one of their favourite customers, Monsieur Belier, a retired ecole Normale Superieure maths professor. It was always entertaining to see this formally attired man in matching tie and handkerchief and the tall, long-haired youth with his earring and goatee (whom you might imagine at first glance to be an expert on reggae alb.u.ms rather than philosophical essays) locked in heated debate. For a good half-hour their conversation provided background noise that was rather agreeable. From the snippets Laurent overheard, the two were arguing amicably about the concept of reality, invoking Descartes and the recent work of mathematician Misha Gromov. For Monsieur Belier, reality did not truly exist, it was formed on our retina from a mixture of emptiness and atoms.

'It exists and at the same time it doesn't exist,' objected Damien.

Laurent turned to look at Maryse who rolled her eyes, indicating that all these concepts were over her head and that was fine with her.

A man of about fifty came through the door and went up to Laurent. 'Do you have La Nostalgie du Possible?'

'Yes.' Laurent stared hard at the man, who gave him an embarra.s.sed smile.

'Sorry,' said Laurent. 'I'll go and get it for you.'

Antonio Tabucchi's text on Pessoa. But it wasn't the t.i.tle that he had heard but an actual question, 'Are you nostalgic for what could have been?' posed by a stranger. A question he had answered truthfully: 'Yes.' And when this random customer had departed with his book, Laurent wondered whether the man had come in purely to put into words the feeling he was living with.

Can you experience nostalgia for something that hasn't happened? We talk of 'regrets' about the course of our lives, when we are almost certain we have taken the wrong decision; but one can also be enveloped in a sweet and mysterious euphoria, a sort of nostalgia for what might have been. Meeting Laure, that might have happened but didn't and yet Laurent remembered the cafe where they had arranged to meet. She wore that white strappy dress, her mauve bag and sungla.s.ses. It had been a very sunny day. As it was fine they had chosen to sit on the terrace.

'Is it really you, Laurent?' She sat down and removed her sungla.s.ses.

They had looked at each other for a long time, unsure what to say first, then Laure's light-coloured eyes crinkled and she smiled. They talked for ages then went for a walk. Laurent could picture very clearly the way he had walked alongside her down the tree-lined streets. The sun shone through the branches, casting flecks of light onto the road. Laure wore white ballet pumps which pa.s.sed from shadow into light in time with her steps. Then the pumps had stopped moving. Laurent looked up at her. Laure held his gaze a little too steadily and he had known it was the moment they would kiss.

That was exactly what Tabucchi was suggesting in his t.i.tle that we can pa.s.s right by something very important: love, a job, moving to another city or another country. Or another life. 'Pa.s.s by' and at the same time be 'so close' that sometimes, while in that state of melancholy that is akin to hypnosis, we can, in spite of everything, manage to grab little fragments of what might have been. Like catching s.n.a.t.c.hes of a far-off radio frequency. The message is obscure, yet by listening carefully you can still catch snippets of the soundtrack of the life that never was. You hear sentences that were never actually said, you hear footsteps echoing in places you've never been to, you can make out the surf on a beach whose sand you have never touched. You hear the laughter and loving words of a woman though nothing ever happened between you. The idea of an affair with her had crossed your mind. Perhaps she would have liked that probably in fact but nothing ever happened. For some unknown reason, we never gave in to the exquisite vertigo that you feel when you move those few centimetres towards the face of the other for the first kiss. We pa.s.sed by, we pa.s.sed so close that something of the experience remains.

Damien and the professor were still debating and were now airing their opinions on the plurality of the universe, quoting from the hypotheses of researchers with Russian-sounding names. Laurent wondered if there were booksellers in these other universes, who also had to heft boxes, take stock, and what's more, find handbags. At that thought he leant back in his chair and looked out at the square. The reality he saw there was perhaps only a mathematical formula in his mind's eye, since his eye did not take in the railings, the trees or the statue. His spirit was elsewhere. At Laure's. On her landing to be precise, advancing towards her door, turning the key in the lock. And there was Belphegor who had immediately come out on the landing to roll around. Laurent entered the apartment and saw the little paintings, the dish with the golden keys, the weeping fig in the light from the window ... He went on into the kitchen, poured himself a Jack Daniel's and went through to the sitting room where Laure, seated on the sofa, turned to smile at him.

When they reached her door, William handed her the spare keys and cleared his throat.

'Before you go in, there's something I need to tell you ... I lied to you because I didn't want to upset you.'

Laure's gaze darted towards him.

'Has something happened to my cat?'

'No, no,' said William.

He had been making a real mess of things lately. First he had inadvertently made it sound as if Laure was dead, and now the cat. He took a moment to tell himself he needed a holiday. Thailand, maybe, or Bali. Anywhere, so long as it was far away.

'Your cat's fine. Everything's fine,' he said emphatically.

There was a pause.

'It's about your bag ... it's here, it's back.'

'What?' asked Laure, then, since William didn't respond, she turned the key in the door and Belphegor came running out.

'Oh, my treasure, I'm home!' she cried.

She scooped the cat up in her arms and carried him into the apartment. As soon as she stepped inside the door, she was. .h.i.t by that feeling of coming home after a long time away, when the dust seems to have been blown off things you had become so used to looking at you had stopped seeing them. Everything suddenly seems more intense, like a photograph restored to its original colour and contrast.

Sunlight was pouring into the living room and the cat leapt from his mistress's arms to roll on the parquet floor. Laure turned to William.

'In your room ...' he said.

She made her way to the bedroom door and pushed it open. The bag was sitting on top of the white bed cover and her strappy dress had been laid out on a hanger beside it. Propped against the mauve leather handles, there was an envelope addressed by hand in black fountain pen: For Laure Valadier. William shut his eyes and bit his bottom lip.

After Laurent had returned the keys, William had gone back to the flat that same evening to feed the cat. As he turned the key, he noticed something different: the door had not been double-locked, only pulled shut. He sensed something was up and yet everything else seemed so normal that it was several minutes before he went into the bedroom and found the bag, the dress and the letter. Of course he could not resist the temptation to read it. He had played a part in the events leading up to the reappearance of the bag on the bed, after all. He took the shade off the living-room lamp and held the sealed envelope over the bulb in order to read through the paper.

Laurent the bookseller was not Laure's latest squeeze after all. He was simply a pa.s.ser-by who had chanced upon the mauve bag in the street. William sat down on the sofa and took the decision not to tell Laure for fear of unsettling her. She was lying in a hospital bed having just come out of a coma. Leading her to believe that the stranger was a do-gooding neighbour seemed the best option in the short term. And it worked.

As soon as he returned to the ward, she bombarded him with questions: Who was this bookseller called Laurent who had come to her flat to look after the cat? How did she know him? What did he look like? What had he said? William stripped his account of Laurent's arrival down to the bare minimum: he had come to the door asking to speak to Laure. He was very polite. William told him Laure was not at home but in hospital, adding that he had to go away for two days and didn't know who was going to feed the cat. Laurent had kindly volunteered to step in, and William had seen no reason to turn him down. Having laid the groundwork, he could claim with some confidence, 'He's one of your neighbours, Laure. Who else could it be?'

'Yes ...' she eventually conceded, 'you must be right. A few new people have moved into the building. There's a guy on the second floor who seems really nice it sounds like it could have been him. I thought he was something to do with graphic novels.'

'That's it, then,' William agreed. 'He must run a bookshop that specialises in comics.'

At the time, he had breathed an internal sigh of relief. But not now. It was time to own up: he had left the keys to Laure's flat and the care of her treasured pet in the hands of a complete stranger. Now Laure was sitting on the edge of the bed, she had opened the envelope and was reading the short letter that William knew by heart.

Dear Laure Valadier, I'm sorry to have intruded so far into your life. It wasn't my intention. I found your bag one morning in the street, and got caught up in trying to find the owner so that I could return it. Things then ran a little out of control.

I now know that you are recovered. I know also that I have given up on the idea of meeting you. I went too far. To quote Patrick Modiano, whom you seem to like, in Villa Triste, 'There are mysterious beings, always the same, who watch over us at each crossroads in our lives.' Let's just say that, unintentionally, I have been one of those beings.

Best wishes Laurent The objects lay scattered silently over the bed. The cat had jumped onto the covers and was sniffing each item carefully. Everything she had grieved for and believed lost for ever had just reappeared.

The first thing she had touched as she felt inside the bag was the bra.s.s compact mirror with birds on, given to her by her grandmother on her eighth birthday. 'It's about time this mirror reflected a pretty young girl's face again,' she had joked. It was the first 'beautiful' gift Laure had ever received, and she had carried it with her ever since.

Next came her keys and the Egyptian pendant bearing her name, a reward for her work in Cairo. The chain it originally hung on had broken six months earlier and she had fixed it to her key ring instead, using a pair of jeweller's pliers borrowed from the Ateliers Gardhier. Her fingers brushed the guilloche ornamentation on her mother's gold cigarette lighter which she kept in her bag in case friends who smoked needed a light. She took it out and rolled the wheel; it produced a flame.

Right at the bottom of the bag, she found the three pebbles: the small white one she and Xavier had picked up on Antparos in the Cyclades in 2002; the long grey one collected on a walk in a park in Edinburgh four years ago; and the round black one from Brittany or the Midi, she couldn't remember which ... Her diary was there, along with Xavier's Montblanc pen. The hair clip with the blue fabric flower she had owned since she was fifteen, having coveted it in the shop window for weeks. The plastic had never broken, proof that the accessories on offer at Candice Beaute must be of the highest order. Her lucky pair of red c.r.a.ps dice bought in London five years ago in a specialist games shop, which she sometimes used to help her make decisions. Her Chanel Coco s.h.i.+ne lipstick in a corally shade of red; the ris de veau recipe she had torn out of Elle at the dentist's two weeks ago, just as he walked in he must have seen her do it but said nothing. Accident Nocturne by Patrick Modiano, which she opened on the flyleaf. Excuse me ... I'm sorry to come up to you in the street like this; I don't normally do this kind of thing, honestly, but ... You're Patrick Modiano, aren't you? ... Yes ... Well ... Yes, I ... I am.

No mobile phone, just the charger. No purse either, but the red Moleskine notebook was there. Laure opened it and read over her own thoughts, scribbled down on Metro journeys or while sitting on cafe terraces. The lists of things she liked or was scared of. A reminder to buy food for Belphegor. A dream, another dream. Then she pulled out the envelope with the photos and found the picture of her parents taken on a road in the Midi sometime in the late 1970s, and the one of Xavier standing in her parents' garden by the apple tree. She had taken it just before one of those summer lunches she had revisited in her dreams that week. The third picture was of the house, taken from the bottom of the garden; if you looked carefully, you could spot Sarbacane hiding up in the weeping willow.

Laure reached for Belphegor, closing her eyes and running her fingers through his fur. She had thought she would never see these pictures again, having kept them safe in her bag for years; the negatives were long since lost. The receipt from the dry-cleaner's was no longer inside the little pocket, but the dress was there, spotless in its plastic wrapping. She took a hairgrip out of her bag and pinned back the strands falling into her face. Next to her make-up bag and the Modiano she placed the half-full bottle of Evian she had sipped from in the taxi minutes before the mugging. The bag seemed to contain even more than she remembered, and as she took out forgotten belongings, she felt like a child sitting under the Christmas tree, unwrapping the gifts from her red cotton stocking. Her sister had had the same stocking and the exact same number of presents, but always finished opening them more quickly so that she could claim Laure had more than her. She sprayed her wrist with perfume, brought it slowly to her nose and closed her eyes.

'William ...' she said.

Frozen in the doorway, William replied with a faint 'Yes?'

'Tell me about this Laurent.'

I like the way this man has slipped away without leaving an address.

I like his letter.

I like the fact that he works in a bookshop.

I'm scared he might be a bit nuts.

I'm scared I'll never meet him.

I find the idea of a stranger coming into my flat terrifying, but I like the idea that Belphegor wasn't scared of him. Which proves the man is not terrifying (paradox).

I like the idea of a man going to so much trouble to find me (no one has ever gone to so much trouble for me before).

How many booksellers in Paris are called Laurent?

She was almost certain she had not lit a fire, but she could not have sworn to it. Perhaps he had burnt a few logs one night when it was chilly, perhaps not. Apart from this one detail, there was no trace of Laurent in the flat. The man had pa.s.sed in and out again like a draught. The only one who could remember him being there was the cat, who had watched him coming and going but refused to say a word about it. Laurent, as this man was called, must have let his eyes wander over her things, the paintings on the walls, and certainly the books on the shelves. Given what he did for a living, might her reading tastes have played a hand in convincing him to carry on his search? Had his interest been piqued by her signed copy of Accident Nocturne, making him want to know more about the person who had mustered the courage to stop Patrick Modiano in the street?

It was late, and by now Laure knew Laurent's letter off by heart. He had apparently found her bag in the street but which street? He had probably taken it home with him and emptied out its contents, examining each item like a detective looking for clues. He must be slightly crazy. Or very romantic. Or have too much time on his hands. Or a bit of all three, Laure thought. He had combed through her diary and, what was more, her red Moleskine notebook. That meant he knew everything she liked or was afraid of, even the contents of her dreams. None of her lovers had ever known as much about her. Only Xavier had been allowed to hear a few of her lists of 'likes' and 'fears', and even then Laure had filtered them carefully. Never before nor after Xavier had she allowed any man to know what lay between those pages. She had lost count of the number of notebooks she had filled since adolescence. They were all carefully stored inside four shoe boxes in the cellar.

And now there was a man in the city who knew almost all there was to know about her. A man whom she had never met yet who was familiar with the decor of her home, had studied her belongings at leisure and stroked her cat, knew exactly what was inside her bag, what she liked to read, what her bedroom looked like. Other men besides Xavier had been allowed access to her body, but no one else had really stepped inside her mind. It was not for want of trying: Laure simply refused to open up. It was more than she was capable of.

Franck, the man she had most recently been seeing, had discovered this to his cost. He had insisted on coming back to her place. As soon as he walked in, Belphegor scurried under the sofa. Franck took it upon himself to pa.s.s judgement on Laure's belongings. The collection of dice in the study struck him as 'bizarre'. As soon as he left the room, Laure took the opportunity to throw a pair she got a one and a two. 'You've got Sophie Calle's books? Bit bonkers, that woman, isn't she?' Laure said nothing. As the minutes ticked by, she could feel herself stiffen. She knew she had to be mindful of her pale eyes narrowing wolf-like in anger. When he made a comment about William, expounding what he thought was a very clever theory about 'gay best friends' seeing their female friends as subst.i.tute sisters or mothers, Laure knew she would not be sleeping with him that night. Besides, Franck was a pretty average lover. She played the sudden headache card and sent him home. The cat came back out from under the sofa, visibly furious at having had to spend over an hour under there, and took himself off to bed without deigning to look at his mistress.

To search for a woman using her stolen handbag for clues. None of the men she had known would ever have embarked on such an enterprise. Not her father, not Xavier. That said ... she was sure Xavier would have taken the things out of a discarded handbag and looked at them, but would he have managed to track down their owner without ID or a phone? Just how had Laurent managed to trace her all the way back to her apartment, in fact? William said he had heard the bell, opened the door and found him standing on the landing. Laure was certain that nothing in her bag apart from the purse had her name on, still less her address. He said he had tried to phone several times yes, her number was in the phone book, but he would have had to know her name to find it. All he had to go on was the Modiano book with the dedication inside. And that would only have provided her Christian name. Even using the patience and skills of deduction of a first-rate detective, he still wouldn't have known her surname. He had gone so far as to pick up her strappy dress from the dry-cleaner's, no doubt by matching the date in the diary with the one on the receipt well observed, but no one at Aphrodite Dry-cleaner's knew her surname or where she lived.

Come to think of it, I don't know any more about him than he knew about me at the beginning: I've got nothing but a Christian name to go on, mused Laure as she got into the bubble bath she had run herself. The cat leapt up onto the side of the tub and posed statue-like in one corner, without taking his eyes off her.

'You saw him, you know all about him. Tell me something,' she pleaded.

The cat narrowed his golden eyes and stared at his mistress. Laure was reminded of the Egyptian G.o.ddess Bastet Belphegor had adopted exactly the same pose. She closed her eyes. She had dreamt of this moment over the last few days in hospital, telling herself that as soon as she slipped under the orange-blossom bubbles, it would all be over. The scorching-hot water and foam surrounded her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then her neck as she let her head slide down the tub until her ears went underwater. All outside noise was m.u.f.fled and she found herself enveloped in warm, coc.o.o.n-like silence. Out of habit, she slipped her hand between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s but there was nothing there. Since the gold chain had snapped, she no longer wore anything around her neck. The little red enamel Faberge egg pendant inherited from her mother was now safely stowed in a bedroom drawer. As for the Egyptian cartouche, she had attached it to her key ring.

Laure opened her eyes and pulled herself upright. The cartouche with the hieroglyphics. That was the one object that bore her surname.